


Lives We Lived

by static_abyss



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Canon Compliant, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 20:40:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7728973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/static_abyss/pseuds/static_abyss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Éponine's heart is made of cracked glass, but she sees Cosette and her blood roars like a tumultuous river in the middle of a hurricane. Cosette fits into the spaces left in Éponine's life, her sweet smile easing in where Éponine feels her own jagged edges.</p><p>They belong together, in this life and the ones to follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lives We Lived

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taupefox59](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taupefox59/gifts).



**5.**

France is a memory tinged in bright red, patriotic blue, and startling bone white. 

Éponine walks through the streets of Paris hungry and tired, shuddering at the smallest of breezes. She cowers from shadows that move too fast and draws her tattered clothing to herself. Sometimes, she lets it hang. It all depends on what she's doing and who she is trying to impress.

Her days are categorized by how hungry she is, or how quiet Azelma is being. Gavroche, she hardly sees, but Éponine learned long ago not to give it too much thought. People die all the time.

She meets Marius by accident on her night off from stealing, just as the sun is rising and she's left the last man's house. Marius is pale, with an abundance of brown curls and an innocent expression that reminds Éponine of quiet evenings at home when she was very small. 

Marius walks right by her, his shoulder jostling her entire frame. He smells like warm soap, and his shirt is soft and so clean, Éponine is afraid she'll dirty it by touching it.

"I'm so sorry," Marius says. "I didn't see you there."

"Don't worry," Éponine says, wrapping her arms around herself to hide some of the holes in her dress. "No one sees me much."

"Oh," Marius says, his eyes scanning the street ahead of him. "Well, that's not very nice."

Éponine didn't ever think so. She has always hated how wrong she's felt whenever she was passed by anyone in the busy streets of Paris, as though there was something wrong with her. As though maybe, people thought that being poor was contagious. She has always felt like there was something more for her, like she didn't quite fit in the life she was living. She'd known what it was, for a time, when she was very small, a sort of rightness she hasn't experienced since.

What Marius says isn't new. It's just that no one has ever affirmed she was right without her prompting. Éponine thinks, maybe, it also has to do with how she's never wanted to believe in something more than she wants to believe in what Marius is saying. 

*

Cosette falls in love the instant she and Marius talk for the first time. Except, she doesn't fall in love with Marius.

"I'm Cosette," she says.

Marius beams at her, his expression so open and delighted that Cosette almost feels guilty that she hasn't looked away from the girl hidden in the shadow of the trees behind Marius. 

The girl stays even after Marius leaves, and Cosette watches her from the window on the second floor of the house. The candlelight gives little away, but there's a comforting weight on Cosette's shoulders that makes her think the girl is still watching.

They stay that way until the sun starts coming up, Cosette at her window and the girl with the sad brown eyes standing at the foot of Cosette's largest tree. Neither of them have slept all night, Cosette too afraid that she would close her eyes and the girl would be gone. 

The silence of the early morning is what makes Cosette get up. It's a steady comfort that comes just before the world wakes up, a softness that speaks of forgotten memories and lingering moments frozen in time. 

Cosette needs the girl below to know her name, to have a piece of Cosette to carry always. The feeling courses through her so strongly that she doesn't stop to be quiet. Cosette flies down the stairs in her white dressing gown and robe, her hair hanging in a long braid over her shoulder. She throws open her front door and sees no one.

"Wait," she calls.

The only answer is the soft hum of rustling leaves and waking birds. 

Cosette walks over to left side of the gate, to where the bars are loose enough for someone to squeeze through. 

"Why?" comes the tired voice from the shadows.

"Please," Cosette says, almost breathless with her anticipation.

The girl steps out from her hidden place in between the wall that separates this house from the alley and the trees that line Cosette's garden. The girl is small, with a thinness that comes from too few meals and too much work. She has big sunken brown eyes and limp brown hair, and her skin looks as frail and as breakable as the small bird Cosette set free, when she was twelve. 

"What's your name?" Cosette asks.

"What's yours?" the girl answers, hunching her shoulders and narrowing her eyes.

"Cosette."

Familiarity flashes in the girl's eyes. It gives way to shock, a dead resignation, and then bursts into fury. 

"I know you," the girl says.

The name "Éponine" whispers through Cosette's mind, an increasing tempo flowing with images of two little girls, who grew up cruel. 

"Éponine," Cosette says.

They shift closer to the gate at the same time, both their worlds tilting back on their appropriate axises. Neither of them understand why the first brush of their fingertips feels like remembering.  
  
  
  
  
**4.**

Éponine remembers France in pangs of hunger so strong they leave her heaving in the middle of New York City, with its open sewers and new homes. She breathes in the smell of genocide and the open sea. 

She remembers Cosette in swathes of black silk, and Marius in the deep red of dried blood. Éponine doesn't know who lived or died, but the agony that rips through her makes her wish she hadn't woken up this time.

"Please," she whispers to the quiet alley.

*

In this life, Cosette turns left at the end of the street, instead of right, and they never meet.  
  
  
  
**3.**

They both remember in one life. 

Cosette is born a rich man's daughter, educated and polished, but bored with her string of suitors. She wears short dresses and curls her hair, and waits for Éponine.

*

Éponine is born a thief here, in South USA, with its dirt roads and sparsely guarded banks. She steals a car and a gun, and works her way east robbing every bank on her way.

The newspapers say she's unhinged. Some call her Clyde, as though making her a man gives the bank tellers back their dignity. Éponine doesn't mind. She's an equal opportunity bank robber, after all.

*

They meet on a Tuesday in a small town just ten minutes out of Phoenix. Éponine is stopping by to fill her car up with gas, when she sees Cosette sitting by the window of the largest house on the block.

Cosette sees her too.

"Hey," Éponine says, making a show of crossing the street and stepping into Cosette's garden.

"Hey," Cosette answers.

Éponine grins and walks up to Cosette's window, her hair tucked under her brown cap, her jacket open so that Cosette can see the suspenders that hold up Eponine's pants.

"What's a girl like you doing in a house like this?" Éponine asks.

Cosette blushes prettily in the morning sun. "What's a girl like you doing in clothes like those?" she answers.

Éponine tips her hat forward and leans in closer to the window. She smells freshly baked pies and the heady perfume of lilies. 

"Why don't you come and find out," Éponine says.

This time, Cosette's grin is sharper, a little dangerous. "Yeah?" she asks Éponine. "Why don't you make me?"

*

They make their way through Southern United States, their pictures plastered on all the poles to the east of Arizona, Éponine with her pants and her hat that covers her hair, and Cosette in flowing flower dresses. They ride away in Eponine's stolen car, the wind whipping their hair around them, and Cosette's laughter filling all the hollow spaces of the car. 

They kiss on the hood of the car and take pictures with cocky grins and a blatant disregard for the law. As far as Éponine is concerned, the law can suck it. She's rich and free, and there's a beautiful girl on her arm.  
  
  
  
**2.**

In one life, Éponine wakes up and her burden is the lives she's lived that have brought her here. She carries them on her shoulders, and holds her head high at a desperate attempt at keeping upright. 

There's no Cosette in her early life, no bright smile and whirlwind of light brown hair with golden tints. Éponine lives with her mother and father, two people who are struggling to make things work. They love her, love her brother and the timid young girl who Éponine wants to call Azelma. But there's no surprise, or hurt, or confusion when her parents walk away. 

"It'll be okay," Éponine tells her brother and sister. "It always is."  
  
  
  
**1.**

There's one life tucked among many where Éponine wakes up and Cosette wakes up, and they find each other in the middle of a grocery aisle in a humid July morning. Cosette wears a pink dress, her golden brown hair tied back into a neat ponytail. She blushes when Éponine catches her looking, and there's an instant connection that draws the two of them together.

They go out for coffee, and Éponine swears she's going to marry Cosette the moment Cosette smiles at her over the rim of her coffee cup, Cosette's eyes alight with mischief. They hold hands on top of the table, and kiss during a summer storm. And every day, Éponine wakes up and wonders what she ever did in her pasts lives, to be this lucky.  
  
  
  
**0.**

Éponine and Cosette begin their story at the foot of a mountain, surrounded by leafy trees and the constant hum of wildlife. They don't remember this life, or the way their fingers burn where they touch each other. 

Éponine's heart is made of cracked glass, but she sees Cosette and her blood roars like a tumultuous river in the middle of a hurricane. Cosette fits into the spaces left in Éponine's life, her sweet smile easing in where Éponine feels her own jagged edges.

They don't remember the quietness of the forest, or the stream hidden underneath the rockbed, at the foot of the tallest tree. Neither of them remember drinking the water or the promise of the forest to wake them again and again, a gift, so that they might find each other across time. They don't remember this strange life, like a quick phrase between a comma, that was inserted into a sentence and changed everything. But it's important to remember that their story started easy. 

They started simple, on the cusp of everything.


End file.
